A Kid's Museum Day
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
There are some memories that rear up once in a while and won’t leave you alone.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
A Kid's Museum Day
by Odin roark
Languid footsteps carry the boy forward
Crop dust from bib overalls mix with floor traffic
Eyes dart from dead ideas to wonders unrecognized
Mother's hand helps lift her son's forty pounds onward
Ascending the marble steps to the second floor
Ever larger exhibition halls
Housing monstrous creatures
Beside glass cases to overwhelm
With hairy two-legged evolution
Peaking from behind mock stones
Atop pedestals supporting
Busts of naked emotions
As yet not encountered
By youthful minds
Drive his hands into pockets
Where more familiar comfort
Steelies and taws warm his fingers
Sepia daylight spills across a frontier porch
Farmer and wife sit together on porch swing
"Like the picture of grandpa and grandma in you scrapbook, mama"
"Yes, dear."
"They're happy, mama."
"Yes, dear."
Mother's eyes glisten
"Why you crying, mama?"
"Oh... just history, sweetheart. Just history."
He nods and smiles
"Yeah, old is sad. Is it time to go yet?"
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Wonderful the memories of such a boy now six. We took him
to Clyde Peelings Reptiland. Quite the experience of adventure
for him. Mechanical dinosaurs, reptiles and turtles. "They were
real!!" "Don't get too close!" Splendid write.
Lady Mary Ann
And then, you surprised us with a new scene, like in a play, where history doesn't seem to matter much except to bring back memories of those bad times and people lost. Like World War I to my grandmother.
I just scanned an old family album like that and was fascinated with all the pictures I hadn't remembered. I didn't find them sad at all.
Have you ever wondered why those portraits taken long ago show the people in mostly very glum stern looking moods. For one, a lot of them didn't want their picture taken because they knew from the mirror that life hadn't been too good to them. Secondly, most of them didn't smile because the photographer told them to cover up their bad or missing teeth. Hugh Hefner does that with every one of his pictures now. I guess all that pipe smoking and all those Pepsis have stained his teeth. It must be his money that reels those young girls in.
Ron
budd